Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications (RCom) has found potential buyers in Bharti Airtel and brother Mukesh's Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, which have expressed interest in bidding for certain assets of the firm undergoing insolvency resolution.
The two companies have expressed interest in buying the physical telecom infrastructure of RCom but not the spectrum held by the insolvent firm, a person in the know told VCCircle, adding that Vodafone Idea was keen but backed off due to its own business issues.
However, in order to buy the firm as resolution applicants, both telecom companies Jio and Airtel will need to pay the market rate of the spectrum to complete the deal, the person added, asking not to be named.
In May this year, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) superseded RCom’s board, allowed a consortium of 31 banks led by State Bank of India to form a committee of creditors (CoC) and appointed a new resolution professional to run the company.
This made RCom, which has total debt of more than Rs 50,000 crore, the first Anil Ambani group company to be declared bankrupt.
RCom has struggled for the past couple of years partly due to a price war triggered by the market entry of Jio.
In August 2018, RCom announced the completion of sale of its wireless spectrum, tower, fibre, media convergence nodes assets and related infrastructure assets to Jio for an unspecified amount. However, earlier in March this year, Jio called off several deals by a mutual agreement with RCom.
